Missouri supreme court blocks congressional maps backed by Trump for midterms – US politics live

Donald Trump minimized the war with Iran while speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. When asked how he would describe the conflict, if not a war, the president called it “small potatoes”.

“A lot of people don’t call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing,” Trump said. “We did Venezuela and we did this. In Venezuela we lost nobody. In this we lost 18 people and in Vietnam we lost 100,000 people and in other conflicts you lost tens of thousands of people.”

When a reporter followed up, saying 18 service members have died and there are record-long deployments, Trump retorted: “Why is it record long? How long were we in Vietnam? How long were we in Vietnam? How long were we in Vietnam? We’re at five months now.”

The war with Iran started in late February, nearly seven months ago. During the conflict, thousands of Iranians have been killed and more than 750 US service members have been wounded. The war has also brought soaring gas prices and disrupted food supply chains worldwide, as the blockade over the Strait of Hormuz has stifled trade and oil supply.

Despite Trump saying Friday that the Iran war is not a “war”, he himself has repeatedly called it a war. Just on Monday, the president referred to it as “a relatively little war”.

Trump told reporters Friday that “there’s no fighting right now”, despite a sharp escalation in the war this week with US strikes on Iran. He also said “we’re taking out a lot of oil” and “we control the Hormuz Strait”, both of these statements are not accurate. The president added that the US could hit Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, where nuclear facilities are reportedly housed, “very soon”.